You Mess with the McGeek, You Mess with
by K9Lasko
Summary: For one blissful moment, no one thinks they are better than anyone else. Crack!fic.


**Warning: **This is a purely crack!-y story meant as humor/parody. Occasional swearing.

**You Mess with the McGeek, You Mess with…**

Sometimes, when petty officers aren't otherwise occupied with getting murdered and being dumped bodily in the many dog-walker-and-roller-blader-conspicuous places of Rock Creek Park, the members of Team Gibbs go out for cocktails. They go to a place geographically equidistant from work, Tony's place, Ziva's place, McGee's place, and Gibbs' place - which is strange, seeing as Gibbs never agrees to join them for cocktails. During a one-hour lunch break and by using a hybrid of Google Maps and another program solely operated by rapid, nonsensical, and seemingly random keystrokes, McGee has carefully calculated this exact point. After which, he consumes exactly five Nutter Butters, which is within the rules of the new diet he's on. (He's tried to get Tony on it, too, but the diet doesn't allow copious amounts of MSG and trans fats, so it's out of the question.)

Unfortunately, the exact point McGee calculated fell on the Qwik-E-Clean Laundromat (the wrong kind of suds), so Tony - _"I'm the senior field agent."_ - made the _very special_ and _admittedly entirely logical_ decision to choose the next closest watering hole.

The place is called "Bottoms Up," and it's small-town hooker classy. There's a jukebox trapped in the early 1990's; a giant block of wood for a bar, grooved by the carvings of post-adolescent man; middle shelf booze; and patrons averaging about two-stars-out-of-five in the looks department (Tony's scale, because looks are important) and three-stars-out-of-five in the potential personality department (McGee's scale, because personality is important, and because Tim is just a _nice guy_.)

But they aren't here to pick up chicks, or guys, or anybody else with whom to wantonly share very intimate body fluids. They are here to _drink _as a team, and maybe even bond as a team. An hour has passed without one of them asserting their dominance and superiority over the others in an inappropriate if subjectively pragmatic way.

Tony teaches Ziva how to swear properly in American - _"No, it's not a 'cluster of fucks', Zee-vahhhh"_ - while Tim plays liquor mule, doggedly trudging through the thickening, thirsty-Thursday happy-hour fray, all while ferrying glass after glass of booze-heavy Jack and Cokes to a table occupied by alcoholic camels.

"Oh McMiscellaneousAndIndubitablyCleverNickname, what are _you_ drinking?" Tony asks while leaning halfway over the table… and practically right into McGee's lap.

Tim attempts to ignore how close Tony is to his face, but he can't help the adorable little frown that tugs at his lips and furrows his brow. Secretly - and McGee would never, ever, _ever_ admit this… even upon pain of brutal torture and gruesome dismemberment after which not even Ducky or Palmer or the entire Bethesda emergency medical department _combined_ could piece him back together... except, of course, if Abby asked him nicely and promised him crazy-monkey-sex immediately afterwards - he thought Tony smelled damn - _"Dayum!" _Ziva practices - good. (For a guy.)

So, McGee feigns annoyance as he looks at his drink. It's pink and fizzy. The color concentrates at the bottom of the glass where it swirls around, a hyper-sweet bright red slurry of high fructose corn syrup. A blue plastic sword impales two plump cherries, stems still attached.

"Oh no no no," Tony looks horrified, like Waterworld is on repeat on cable again horrified. "That's not a Shirley Temple now, is it?"

"Surely it is not a temple, Tony," Ziva reasons. Little does anybody know, but because she missed an entire week of an accelerated colloquial English course due to a prior engagement knifing, shooting, judo-chopping, and blood choking her way out of a Yemeni resort slash terrorist camp, Ziva David can speak the language perfectly and eloquently, yet idioms and regionalisms are impossible for her to grasp, even after years of prompting. But, really, it's not worth slicing hairs when she knows at least seven other obscure yet U.S. foreign interest relevant languages.

"It's not a temple, Ziva," McGee answers patiently. "It's not a Shirley Temple, Tony." McGee is always patient. Even when he's impatient, he's patient. "I had the bartender add vodka. It's good."

"Pretty daring," Tony says as he reaches out and takes the sword-impaled cherries as his own. He plucks one from the stem; he licks his lips. Ziva watches like a panther waiting to prey on a small, furry jungle creature.

Almost everything Tony does seems like a subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) prelude to sex. On occasion, McGee lies in bed at night just thinking about what life would be like to be that obsessed with sex. Unfortunately, those thoughts usually get in the way of his nightly self-ministrations. He's glad he doesn't have DiNozzo's problem.

But the cherries have pits, and soon Tony is crying in pain as he spits the half-masticated piece of fruit out onto the table. While _the _senior field agent - emphasis on _SENIOR, _dammit - manages to look minutely abashed, both McGee and Ziva stare at its shredded and slobber-covered form. They all have the sudden and intense urge to bag-and-tag, sketch, take photographs, and interview potential witnesses, all while blithely making risqué wisecracks about each other's personal lives within earshot of other law enforcement officials and the general public.

_Serves him right!_ McGee glares. _Asshole. _He wanted those cherries.

The night isn't over yet, and they settle into a pleasantly spirited debate over whether or not Director Vance was a Doberman in a previous life. Soon the glasses are empty, and McGee, like a well-trained spaniel, gets up to flush out another round. DiNozzo pays; his great uncle invented the Chia Pet, after all. He is _loaded._ But there is a sudden impediment in Tim's path in the form of a great hulking man-figure, and since Tim is no dancer, nor is he even remotely spatially aware despite being a trained federal agent armed with a semi-automatic, he trips right into a set of rock-hard abs. If he were Tony, those abs would have given him a rather nasty concussion.

"Watch it, pipsqueak!" The hulking man-figure rumbles. Much like cheetahs and Thomson's gazelles, lions and wildebeest, Zivas and terrorists - hulking man-figures are the natural predators of mild-mannered geeks, nerds, and McGees. And because geeks, nerds, and McGees are first-and-foremost intelligent beings, Tim backs away with his hands held in front of him, placatory. Clearly, there's no point in fighting when there is the option to simply back away slowly, unless you're Ziva. Besides, McGee has already been to prison once - well, he was held hostage and handcuffed to a wall in a women's prison during a riot, _but still_ - he'd like to avoid a reprise, even if that means doing something sensible and non-badass.

And then it happens. On any given day - _"Which means everyday, Zee-vahhh." _- Tony is perfectly content to preen like a well-coiffed French Poodle at his air-conditioned desk, while occasionally loping reluctantly after errant suspects who run while being asked nicely to cuff themselves. But if something really, _really_ gets his dander up - figuratively, never literally, _please_ - Tony latches on like a game-bred pit bull. And nobody - _nobody_ - except for Leroy Jethro Gibbs himself, the threat of a swift kick in the balls, and/or a hockey stick to the face - can call him off. In fact, it happened just last week, when Earl from accounting waved and smiled in passing at Ziva. The janitorial staff had to special order something to get rid of all the blood.

So it happens.

And now amongst the chaos, as the merely-average-looking bar patrons rescue their own drinks and scatter to the periphery to watch and comment, DiNozzo is fighting the good fight - pit bull gameness and all - but getting his ass handed to him by that steroidal wonder. Ziva is on the phone with Gibbs, stumbling over yet another ridiculous idiom - _"Is Tony fighting an uphill or a downhill battle? Everything here looks pretty flat to me!" -_ while McGee cautiously looks for some opportunity to break in and pull the two men apart before Tony gets his internal organs forcefully rearranged. He has to weigh his options, though, because he can't really decide if intervening would be a good idea. They didn't cover this scenario during FLETC, and Tony hadn't yet taken the time out of his busy _senior field agent_ calendar - which includes making inane cinema references, chatting up anything with an X-chromosome, selectively following SOPs, and _occasionally_ solving a brutal and heinous crime - to lecture McGee on proper response when your idiot co-worker has picked a fight with a larger and quite possibly genetically superior barfly.

So while McGee is trying to figure _that_ out, Tony is yelling something. It's slurred and breathless: "You mess with the McGeek, you mess with the tiger! You mess with the McGeek, you mess with the tiger!"

The hulking man-figure is now slamming Tony against the solid wooden bar, again and again. DiNozzo does like to talk; maybe the hulking man-figure only wants him to _shut up, please!_

"You mess-" _Slam! _"-with the McGeek-" _Slam! Slam! _"-you mess-" _Slam!_ "-with the tiger!" _Slam! Slam!_

Tony still claws spiritedly at his attacker. DiNozzo's never give up, unless they have a small child they are tired of parenting.

"Get off me, you little cuss!"

But then Gibbs is there, having broken the space-time continuum yet again all while _not_ spilling his two cups of coffee. Luckily for everybody - but especially for Tony who is perilously near death yet somehow still alive despite the repeated instances of blunt force trauma to the head - the hulking man-figure is a former Marine, and while both Tim - _"I'm so sorry, Tony!"_ - and Ziva - _"You should have fought harder, Tony!"_ - drag their coworker's insensate body out the door, he and Gibbs connect on a sudden and inexplicably deep level while swapping war stories.

At the funeral, they find comfort in the fact that DiNozzo was probably too intoxicated to have felt any pain. Ducky had said so, after expounding upon a tale from his youth, which featured a drunken brawl and a fall from a sixth story balcony.

"Yeah, well, he was too headstrong anyway," Director Vance says the very next Monday while everybody is still traumatized and achy. "Here are three files, Agent Gibbs. Stellar people. They know better than to think for themselves or question their superior, even if he's gone off the rails. I think you'll like them."


End file.
